Tempted by the Jaguar #4: Infiltration (Riverford Shifters)

by Cristina Rayne

  “Have you been able to locate any of the captives?” Hunter asked as they hurried down the corridor.

  “Just one,” one of the wolves answered, and Kylie’s pulse suddenly sped up. “She looked pretty bad, practically skin and bones, but we’re pretty sure it was Jack’s mate, Maya. A couple of my clansmen are trying to get her out as we speak.”

  Even though it hadn’t been Molly or her mother, Kylie felt a surge of happiness and was suddenly more hopeful. Finding the dead coyote shifter had shaken her confidence. If one of them had been found still alive, then there was still a better than average chance all the others would be found alive, too.

  “We found the coyote,” Hunter said grimly. “He was already dead. It was terrible, what that poor man must have gone through to end in such an unspeakable state.”

  Once they reached the door, a couple of the tigers pushed to the front and peered into the dim stairwell before they allowed everyone to enter. Seconds later they were at the door to the fourth basement level and the tigers repeated the process.

  “Another hallway full of doors,” one reported. “Some of them are open, and I can see a desk covered with papers in one. Should we stop?”

  “Yes,” Maxim said instantly. “A couple of you stay on this level and see if you can find any useful intel on what these bastards are doing here.”

  The next level had something large and heavy barricading the door. It took five men to push the door open wide enough for everyone to squeeze through. The first thing Kylie noticed was the sound of pounding footsteps somewhere nearby, followed by the enormous room on the left that had a large viewing window that reminded her of an ICU room. However, the equipment inside made the space look like a cross between a morgue, a torture dungeon, and a server farm.

  Two large metal slabs about the length of a tall man sat side-by-side in the center of a room that was lined with at least a couple dozen computers, a series of attached thick, leather and metal restraints dangling off both edges. There was also a wide cart of stainless steel drawers covered on top with every type of medical tool imaginable as well as some wicked looking items that Kylie had no idea what they could possibly be used for except to cause pain.

  Maxim suddenly went rigid, and his nostril flared. “I can smell Anna in here,” he whispered, his tone equal parts horror and hope. Kylie immediately sniffed the air, and sure enough, there was a strong odor of several male lions and a fainter smell of tiger beneath. Her heart clenched when she also caught the acrid smell of fear and blood. What the hell were these bastards doing?

  “Come on,” Hunter said firmly, placing a hand on Maxim’s shoulder. “Her scent is still strong enough that she might still be on this floor. It also looks like whoever was here left in a big hurry. All the computers are still on and some of the carts are skewed.”

  Maxim nodded, the haunted look in his eyes replaced with a cold fury. Sandwiched between the newly arrived men, they moved quickly down the hall, checking every door until they came to one that was locked and couldn’t be kicked in after several tries. There was no doorknob, and on closer inspection, seemed to be dead-bolted from the inside with a non-electronic lock.

  “I bet a bunch of the sick fuckers are hiding inside,” one of the tigers growled as he gave the door another savage kick. “It’s lined with something—concrete or steel. There’s no way we’re getting in this way.”

  “Oh, we’re getting in,” Maxim said, his voice quiet and utterly lethal. Kylie actually felt a shiver go down her spine. “And then we’ll make them talk.”

  He stalked over to an adjacent room, and everyone silently followed him inside. Then without a word, he began kicking in the sheetrock of the wall connecting the two rooms. All the rest instantly joined him.

  Not knowing how much help she could be, Kylie stood back out of everyone’s way, anxiously watching the door and listening for footsteps. She hadn’t forgotten the fading footsteps she had heard when they had first entered this level. The last thing they needed was to be ambushed here, especially when Maxim was in so much emotional pain and not at his sharpest.

  A gunshot abruptly sounded and several guys cursed. Kylie whipped around, her heart suddenly in her throat. “Everyone okay?” she asked anxiously.

  Nods all around.

  “That definitely came from the other side,” Hunter said, peering briefly into the center of the large hole they had managed to tear in the wall before stepping back and to the side. He stared thoughtfully at the hole. “I have an idea.”

  He edged closer to the hole and crouched down. “We’re trying to save you, you idiot!” he shouted. “The place is overrun with enemy shifters, communications are down, and we don’t have much time! How about you unbolt the damn door before they torch the place and you end up burning alive in there?”

  Kylie stared at her lover in astonishment for a split-second before she scrambled out of the room and back to the bolted door, everyone else a half-step behind her. Then they heard several clicks in succession, and the door was opening. Maxim lunged forward and the person at the door was brutally pushed back as he charged inside, Hunter and a couple of tigers right on Maxim’s heels.

  “Stay back!” she heard an unknown baritone voice say shrilly, dripping with panic and fear. “I’ll kill them!”

  Kylie’s eyes widened, and she pushed into the room even though a couple of wolves tried to keep her out. She froze the moment the scene was finally revealed.

  “Molly…” she tried to say, but her friend’s name got caught in the huge knot of horror that had instantly formed in her throat.

  A middle-aged man in a lab coat that was drenched in blood all down the front stood next to two women on the floor, one of which was Molly who was hugging, Kylie suddenly realized with more horror, Maxim’s fiancé, Anna, to her chest. Molly’s hands and the front of the white hospital gown she wore were stained with crimson, as was the bottom half of Anna’s gown that was wadded between her legs. There was also a pool of blood that was slowly spreading out from beneath Anna’s bottom.

  To add to the horror show, the bastard lion was pointing a gun at the back of Molly’s head while she held Anna and attempted to shield the bleeding woman’s body with her own. Molly’s eyes were closed tightly, and she appeared to be mumbling something under her breath, maybe a prayer. If not for the faint rising of her chest, Kylie would have thought Anna dead.

  Molly cried out in pain and her eyes snapped open as the lion suddenly reached out and grabbed a handful of her hair, yanking her head back. It was in that eternal moment that Molly’s eyes found Kylie’s, and their gazes locked. Kylie would never forget the look of shock when Molly finally saw beyond the disguise, of the anguish and absolute terror in her best friend’s eyes for the rest of her life.

  “You’re going to stand aside and allow me to walk out of here with this human,” the scientist snarled, “or I’ll put a bullet in both of them right now before you can even pull—”

  Kylie wasn’t sure how it happened. One moment she blinked and the next, Maxim was suddenly there in his tiger form, his powerful jaws biting down on the lion’s neck with a disturbing crunch until he had bitten clean through the lion’s neck. His severed head fell out of a sudden fountain of blood with a gruesome, meaty thump onto the floor next to Molly. The gun went off as both body and tiger hit the ground, and Molly finally screamed. However, the bullet wedged harmlessly into the ceiling.

  Her legs were moving towards the two women on the floor before Kylie had even made a conscious decision to do so. She dropped down to her knees beside Anna and began to stuff more of the bleeding woman’s hospital gown hard against her groin. She wanted nothing more than to throw her arms around Molly in relief that her best friend was okay, to reassure her, but right now nothing else mattered more than to try and staunch the blood, not even the fact that she was now touching tiger’s blood and her dominant shifter soul was likely now a tiger as well.

  Then Molly was talking, and it took Kylie a bewildered mo
ment for her friend’s words to compute, and that Molly was actually making sense and not screeching hysterically.

  “That fucker said she’d had a miscarriage. She was already bleeding pretty badly when he dragged her in here and just dumped her in a corner. While he was babbling into his cell phone, I tried to stop the bleeding, but nothing I did seemed to work at all!”

  “We need to get her to a hospital now!” A naked Maxim knelt down on Anna’s other side and reached beneath her to lift her up into his arms. Kylie stood with him, her hands maintaining the pressure against the flow of blood.

  “Go with them, Kylie,” Hunter said. “Help Maxim get both Anna and Molly out of this hellhole. Ryder’s still waiting for me, and your mother—I swear if she’s here, I’ll bring her to you. Now go!”

  Feeling torn, Kylie could only nod in anguish. The thought of leaving Hunter behind—but no, he was right. Maxim and Molly were counting on her, and it was her fault in the first place that Molly was even here in the middle of all this madness and horror.

  “Find them. Then come back to me.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  There was a sole shifter clinic on the eastern edge of Amarillo, but even as they raced across the city at probably over a hundred miles an hour where the tiger that was driving them was able, Kylie knew it was no use. Anna wasn’t just bleeding from a miscarriage, she was bleeding from whatever experiment those bastards had been performing on her. Without knowing exactly what had been done, there was no way the shifter doctors could quickly know how to treat her.

  Her eyes had fluttered open once, but Kylie doubted the poor girl was truly seeing anything or even aware of her situation. Maxim had tried to talk to her, but she hadn’t responded to any of his words. She had to bite her lip hard to keep from bursting into tears at the pain Maxim was radiating, how he gently cradled her head in his lap and kissed her forehead tenderly as he trembled and willed with all his being for her to hold on.

  They had managed to reach the surface in a surprisingly short amount of time, and the bobcats had indeed cleared the property of any security. Still, Kylie couldn’t help tormenting herself with the fruitless wish that they had gotten to Anna and Molly sooner.

  Molly was sitting quietly in the third row of the Explorer. Kylie had expected her to fall apart the moment they were in the SUV and she realized they were finally safe. Yet, Molly hadn’t even shed one tear, much less gone into hysterics. Kylie was certain her friend had seen Maxim shift into a tiger, bite the head off that piece of scum, and then shift back into a man, but she didn’t even seem to be nervous about being in a vehicle with him at all. Was she in shock?

  However, they were pulling into the parking lot of what looked on first glance like an apartment complex, and she lost the moment to start fussing over her friend. They had called ahead, so there was already a crowd of people waiting for them at the entrance. Once Anna was removed from the SUV, Kylie hung back for a moment, asking the driver to wait a moment before going to park.

  Even though Kylie had probably let the cat out of the bag about her Polyshifter heritage in front of all those tigers and wolves, it was still possible that in all the excitement, none of the men had even noticed the change in her scent. So just in case her situation could still be salvaged, she needed to make her jaguar soul dominant again.

  She took off the swat-like vest and then used a towel she had found in the pocket of one of the seats and a water bottle to rinse and wipe her skin clean of Anna’s blood, paying special attention to beneath her nails. Only then did she use the charm bracelet.

  Molly watched all of this without comment, even reaching a hand out for the towel after Kylie had finished with it where she proceeded to clean the blood from her hand as well. Her continued silence was making Kylie more and more worried.

  “Come on,” Kylie said, opening her door, “Let’s get you checked out inside, too.”

  Molly shook her head as she climbed over the seat and followed Kylie out her door. “I’m okay.”

  “Like hell you are!” Kylie finally exploded, whirling around to face the other girl. “You were just kidnapped by a bunch of psychos who did God-only-knows what to you, only to watch a girl nearly bleed to death right in front of you while her boyfriend turns into a tiger right before your eyes and literally bites his head off!”

  “So the tiger part was real,” Molly said softly. “I thought maybe I had hallucinated that part, that they’d drugged my food or something, and I was just tripping out. Everything did taste kinda funny…”

  Kylie instantly deflated as her worry was replaced by a heavy dose of guilt. She threw her arms around the redhead and hugged her tight. “I’m so sorry. This whole mess is my fault, because of what I am, because those bastards wanted to draw me out.”

  “‘What you are’?” Molly repeated, pulling out of her embrace to look at Kylie with a perplexed frown.

  “I promise to tell you everything,” Kylie said, tugging on Molly’s arm, “but first, I want you to get checked out by a doctor. Those sick bastards really might have put something in your food.”

  Once Molly had submitted to some blood tests and promised to find the doctor again if she started to feel ill, the clinic staff had given her a pair of scrubs to wear and allowed her to go on her way without admitting her, at least until her labs came back and required otherwise. They had immediately sought out Maxim in the clinic’s version of an ER where they found out that Anna had been rushed into surgery. A nurse led them to a waiting room where they had directed Maxim.

  As he had arrived naked, he too had been given a pair of scrubs. He was a mess. Kylie sat next to him and wrapped her arms around him, offering him what little comfort she could. Maxim wasn’t physically crying, but the utter despair in his eyes told her that his soul was wailing in anguish.

  After a long silence, Kylie began to quietly tell Molly about herself, about shifters and their society in general, and then what it meant to be what she was, a Polyshifter who had once been a Deadend and was now considered a Returner of the jaguar clan. She explained about being attacked by the lioness and why the assassin had thought she was a Rogue from a lion clan.

  Then finally, she told her about her relationship with Hunter and why he had stayed behind at the ranch.

  “So you do know who your birth parents are,” Molly said.

  Her eyes were looking a little glazed. Understandable, as it wasn’t every day that you learned there were people in the world who could shapeshift into animals at will and that one was your best friend since elementary school.

  Kylie nodded. “Their names are Alan and Grace Hall. They were both Polyshifters, too.”

  “And you think your mother was in that horrible place?” Molly said, appalled.

  “Another captive who managed to escape said he saw a woman who looked just like me and was a cougar shifter. Just as I’m now living as a jaguar, my mom and dad lived as cougars in order to hide their true selves, so it’s possible.”

  Maxim lifted his head. “If she’s there, Hunter will find her,” he said firmly.

  Kylie smiled sadly and hugged him tighter. Even though he was in agony, he was still trying to cheer her up. The man’s strength and selflessness was boggling.

  Anna was still in surgery when there was a big commotion outside the waiting room. Kylie rose and peeked out the door in enough time to see a group of doctors and nurses wheeling a stretcher quickly down the hall that contained a bleeding, dark-haired man dressed only in a pair of blood-spattered scrub pants that was wearing an oxygen mask. She stiffened when she caught the whiff of a jaguar.

  “Kylie!”

  Her head immediately whipped towards the voice. Hunter was currently hurrying down the hall towards them, the front of his sweatshirt covered in blood. Just how many times was she going to see her loved ones smeared in blood today?

  She ran to meet him, throwing her arms around him and squeezing him tight despite the blood. It smelled of jaguar, so she was in no danger of switching
animal souls.

  “Was that…?” she asked anxiously, suddenly realizing who the man on the stretcher must have been.

  “Yes, that was Ryder,” Hunter replied, his voice just as anxious. “We found him wandering around the sixth level. One of the bastards had shot him in the abdomen before he managed to take him down.”

  “And my mother?” She was almost afraid to hear the answer.

  Hunter looked stricken, and Kylie’s heart felt as if it had suddenly been cut out. “Is she—” Her voice cracked. “Is she—dead?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “We looked everywhere. By the time we found Ryder, we’d already found all the other women Jack had mentioned minus a cougar. Even so, some of the guys stayed behind in order to give the place another sweep. We think most of the scientists managed to escape in the very beginning, through that second stairwell. All their vehicles are missing from the garage, including the Audi with the geneticist. It’s very possible that they could have taken her with them then. She is a Polyshifter, after all, but we have no way of knowing right now if she was even there in the first place. The guys are also gathering every file, paper, and computer they can get their hands on. Whatever they were doing there, hopefully we’ll find the answers in all of that.”

  His eyes suddenly looked over her shoulder, and Kylie automatically turned to look as well. Molly was currently looking out the door, staring curiously at them.

  “Molly’s okay, and Anna’s still in surgery,” she said. Then in a lower voice, “It doesn’t look good, and Maxim knows it. That she even survived the ride over here is a miracle.”

  Kylie introduced Molly and Hunter, then her lover went over to Maxim and put a comforting arm around his shoulder. They began talking in low voices.

  “Come on,” Kylie said to her friend, dragging her back into the hall. “Let’s give them a little privacy for the moment and go see if we can find a vending machine in this place. It’s going to be a long day.”